A Saturday afternoon in midDecember：not a good time to be hanging around San Francisco’s Union Square，the city’s premierpremier shopping district.Hundreds of people laden with purchases battle along the pavements，search despairinglydespairingly for scarce taxis or stragglestraggle to get through Macy’s doors.It is enough to put anybody off shopping for life.
But wait：surely Christmas shopping in recent years was different？After all，this is close to Silicon Valley，the center of the Internet revolution and the new economy，the land of the tieless billionairesbillionaire who bought all their presents online at midnight the day after Thanksgiving.Yet the crowds in Union Square were as bad as ever.They seemed obliviousoblivious of a 1arge billboardbillboard advertisement above their heads for one of the Bay Area’s many dot.coms，which flashed the message：“Say Goodbye to the Mall？”And they paid no attention to the advertisement on many of their shopping bags that pointed a way out of their predicamentpredicament：“Online Shopping.No Experience Needed.”
Electronic commerce，it seems ，still has its limits，even in California.For all the feverishfeverish excitement about the triplingtripling of electronic shopping last holiday season，the total spent by American consumers online still amounted to only about 1%of all retailretail sales—barely a tenth of the revenues from another method of distance selling that has been in use for a century：the catalogue.And the electronic shopping was concentrated on quite a narrow range of goods：mainly books，toys and music.Worse，the holiday season threw up as many stories of failed and late deliveries as of explosiveexplosive）growth.And，more recently，a string of hackers’attacks have temporarily disabled some of the bestknown ecommerce websites.Perhaps retailers in the physical world need not lose much sleep over the Internet，or at least not yet？
Yet they are losing sleep，and are right to be doing so，for three reasons.The first is that mighty oaksoak from tiny acornsacorn do grow.Electronic commerce may not amount to much at the moment，but it is growing very fast.In businesstobusiness transactions，in particular，the advantages and cost savings to be had from dealing on the Internet have caused ecommerce to mushroommushroom.At present，such transactions account for as much as 80%of all ecommerce，which，according to Forrester Research，an Internet consulting firm，added up to over 150billion in 2003.In 2003that figure reached over S｜3trillion.But even in the businesstoconsumer field，the main subject of this survey，the growth of online commerce has been extremely fastdespite consumers’undoubted attachmentattachment to their traditional methods of shopping.
The second reason concerns critical mass.In many areas of retailing and commerce，the Internet is unlikely to capturecapture more than a few percentage points of the market for several years to come.But even a small share can quickly start to have a big effect.In the travel business，for instance，marginsmargin are so thin that a loss of only 3～5%of the market to the Internet threatens to drive large numbers of traditional travel agents out of business.According to Shop.org，an online retailers’group，in 1999online penetrationPenetrotion of the American travel market had already reached almost 2%.
The third reason is more worrying still：traditional retailers，for all the strengths of their brand names and their existing relationships with suppliers and customers，have found it extraordinarily hard to compete online.There are formidableformidable obstacles that stand in the offline intermediariesintermediary n.‘way.It may turn out that the biggest effect of online businesstoconsumer commerce is not its size，but the way it changes the rules of the retailing game—to the evident perplexityperplexity of those who have hitherto played it best.
Even so，the place to start is still with the size of the business and how fast it is likely to grow.According to Forrester，online businesstoconsumer transactions in America were worth some 20billion in 2002.That figure growed to some 184billion in 2004.Other analystsanalyst，such as Jupiter Communications and the Yankee Group，have come up with similar predictions.A survey by Ernst &Young，another consulting firm，suggests that 39million Americans shopped online in 1999，and that nearly half of them spent 500or more.Within just a few years，the Internet could capture 5%of America’s retail market，with other rich countries likely to follow in its wake.By 2010，forecastsforecast Goldman Sachs，an investment bank，electronic shopping could account for 15～20%of retail sales.Jeff Mallett，president of Yahoo！，the biggest Internet portal，predicts that online retailing will grow “as fast as email”.
网上购物
在十二月中旬的周六下午，去旧金山的主要商业区联合广场逛街可不是件轻松的事。成百上千的人带着大大小小的购物袋拥挤在人行道上，有的在拼命地寻找着出租车，有的在尽力地挤出莫西商场的门口。这种经历足以让所有人从此对购物望而却步。
但是且慢，最近几年的圣诞购物应该有所不同吧？毕竟靠近网络革命和新经济的中心——硅谷。在这里那些不戴领带的百万富翁们早在感恩节第二天的午夜就把礼物买好了。然而联合广场依旧是人潮如涌。他们似乎根本就看不见头顶上一家海湾地区的网络公司所做的大幅广告，上面闪烁着“对商场说再见吧”的字样；许多购物袋上印着的“在线购物，无须经验”的广告给人们指明了摆脱购物困扰的途径，但他们也熟视无睹。
看来即使在加州，电子商务也存在着局限。虽然上一个假日人们为电子购物营业额增长了两倍而欣喜若狂，但所有美国人在线购物额也不过是总零售额的1％，仅是目录购物——已有一百多年历史的另一种远程购物方式——的十分之一。另外，电子购物仅仅局限于某些商品，主要是书籍、玩具、音乐等。更为糟糕的是，假日期间伴随着业务增长的喜讯的是一起又一起的投递失败和晚点的事件。近来一系列的黑客攻击事件导致一些著名电子商务网站暂时关闭。或许现实世界中的零售商还用不着为因特网失眠，或者至少现在不用？
然而，他们失眠了。有三条理由使得他们的担心不是杞人忧天。首先，橡果虽小，足以长成参天大树。电子商务目前看来虽不足为虑，但其增长速度很快。尤其在商家对商家的交易模式中，由于因特网交易的优势和成本的降低，使得此类电子商务迅速增长。现在商家对商家的交易模式的交易量占电子商务总交易量的80％。根据一家因特网咨询公司，弗里斯特调查公司的调查，2002电子商务交易总额达1，500多亿美元。2003年这一数字达到3万亿美元。即使在这次调查的主要项目，商家对消费者的交易模式中，其增长速度也极为迅速，尽管消费者仍旧对传统的购物方式难以割舍。
第二个原因跟临界点有关。在商业和零售业的许多领域，因特网在几年中不会占据太多的市场份额，但是这一部分份额可能会产生巨大的影响。例如在旅游业中，由于利润空间狭小，即使失去3～5％的份额也会使大量的传统旅游代理失去饭碗。根据一家在线零售集团，shop．org的统计，1999年在线旅游业务已占据了美国旅游市场总额的将近2％。
